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About Me

I'm just your basic, all-American girl from Denver, Colorado, except for now, I live half way around the world in Japan.: ) I met my husband in university in Denver. College sweethearts. We have been happily married since 1997. And have been together for way longer, about 16 years total. He's originally from Osaka, Japan. We lived for a couple of years in Honolulu Hawaii, where our beautiful first born son, Branden was born. We were sent there by the company my husband works for. He works for an airline by the way. After living in Honolulu, my husband's employer, wanted us to move to Japan. We live in Chiba, Japan. Where we just built our dream home, an import "all American" house! Which means a big GE oven, big GE dishwasher and yes, central heating and central air conditioning, yay! We also have a beautiful second son, named Noah. Since my husband works for an airline like I said, we travel a lot and I really do appreciate the flight benefits. Other then that, I just love spending time with my family and friends and enjoy back yard BBQ's.

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Our first potato harvest! 100 potatoes

Last week June 6th right before the boys went to swimming school, via the swimming bus. Noboru had wanted us to pull the first 3 potato plants on the left because he said they looked ready compared to the others. I agreed, I thought so too. And also rain was predicted the next day. So, that's what we did. See how these 3 plants on the left look all wilty and the leaves turned color a bit? That's what it says online that means they are ready.

Finally the big day to see what's under there! Hahaha. : ) See how these 3 are indeed all wilty and ready looking. Hope something's under there! : )

Comparing them to the potato plants to the right, who were all nice bright green and not wilty looking. So yeah it was time for those 3 plants to the left, last Thursday.

Hey kiddos! We wanted them to experience the thrill of the dig!

And dig they did! What fun!

I spy with my little eye, a white potato under the dirt! : )

The boys had a blast digging for the potatoes! This made me very happy! : )

We decided to throw away the itty bitty super tiny ones. But the medium and bigger ones we kept.

Noboru enjoying the view and the quiet. Branden meanwhile looking for something.

The potatoes from last week were very good size. They were, fit in your hand size, but really great size. Granted the potatoes we pulled today are giants. Hahaha. : )

This pic was taken from last week showing we had a nice size box from the potatoes we pulled from the 3 plants plus the other 5 plants were not even pulled yet. We had 27 potatoes from last week. Plus these plants were not even pulled yet.

And now today is Monday here. And because rain is expected all this week... except for today where we live and also a typhoon is expected to come, this Thursday. Granted will the typhoon come? Or will it be downgraded to just tropical storm, ykwim. Truth is, we don't know. But we do know 1 thing, rain should be coming and possible typhoon. So because of that, we decided to just go ahead and pull the rest of the potato plants this morning and that's what we did.

Alright plants, your time has come. : ) You have grown nice and look pretty good, but today is the day. Your number is up! ; )

You know what, we were very happy and thrilled with the size of the potatoes from last Thursday. But Noboru and I were actually a little taken back by the size of the potatoes from today. They were all fist size and up. Bigger then your hand size and up. Barely no puny teeny tiny ones from today. Mostly just very good sized ones to monster sized ones. So yeah wow, the difference Thursday to Monday makes. Wow! : ) The size difference from just letting them sit in the ground for the weekend was quite obvious.

Also, to be fair there were many tiny or small ones we did not keep. I count 13 potatoes from this picture alone. And these ones we did not keep. I told Noboru the small ones, I could cut in half and steam and with a little butter and salt and pepper they'd be great but he thought, we had enough already so....

I count 10 here. Again, we did not keep these. And some of the smaller ones with no defects I did keep, but any with defects we didn't keep.

These are proper/decent bake potato size potatoes. Not bad for our first time, I'd say. : ) I'm glad we were patient and didn't prematurely pull them.

And again these ones we did not keep. I mean, if you count every teeny tiny potato and small and medium and large. Then yes you can fairly say we grew and harvested 100 potatoes. However, we did not keep 100. The super small ones that were just too small. Some had a few deep pit marks. But the amount of good potatoes were kept were 70. 70 good sized potatoes. Not counting the super tiny ones or pitted ones or throw away ones or defected ones. We're talking 70 nice sized ones that we can use. And 30 either too small or too pitted to make anything usable out of. : ) And I'd say 70 usable potatoes are pretty great, considering we only used 3 potatoes to end up with all these.

Don't forget the first batch we pulled from last Thursday. Plus this huge overflowing batch from today. : )

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About the Blog

This blog was started for everybody I care about and love back home, it sorta helps my family and friends feel more connected to me and my life. It's also a place to make new friendships, support one another, laugh our butts off at times, and just be kind to one another and hang out! So please join me, while I try living my life in Japan, all the good, the bad and yes even the embarrassing blunders that I will probably be making along the way! : )